A story about missing someone
Memo and the Empty Chair
Granny Floss has gone home after the summer and Memo aches. A story about missing somebody, and how memory works.
3 minutes to read aloud · 😢 Sad
Granny Floss stayed for the whole summer, and then on Sunday she went home.
Memo waved until the bus was a dot. Then Memo went inside, and the house was the same house, except that it was not, because the chair by the window was empty and it had not been empty for eleven weeks.
Memo's chest went achy. That is what happens. It is a real ache, in a real place, just under the middle.
"I miss her," Memo said.
"She'll visit at Christmas," said somebody kindly, which did not help even slightly, because Christmas is not now, and the ache is now.
Memo went and sat in Granny Floss's chair, which was worse and better at the same time.
Pinky came and sat on the arm of it.
"Have you got something of hers?"
Memo had. A little wooden bird, that Granny Floss had carried in her pocket for fifty years and had put into Memo's paw on the last morning without saying anything about it.
"Hold it," said Pinky. "Now tell me a happy one."
"A happy one?"
"One story. Any story. A good one."
So Memo held the bird and said: "She taught me to whistle. It took four days. On the fourth day I did it by accident while I was complaining about not being able to do it, and she laughed so hard she had to sit down on the step."
And Memo was smiling. Actually smiling, with the ache still there, both things at once.
They did seven more. The one about the burnt pancakes. The one about the wasp. The one where Granny Floss fell asleep in the deckchair and woke up and pretended she had not.
The ache did not go. Memo is quite clear about that; it still turns up, usually around teatime.
But Memo has worked something out, and it is the thing that makes Memo who Memo is.
You only ache for somebody because you had them. The ache is made of the same stuff as the good bit.
So Memo keeps the bird in a pocket, and remembers on purpose, and nobody Memo loves is ever really gone.
